Have any of you build software on a Slackware system? It’s surprisingly easy. If you have a tar (.tgz) Slackware package that you want to build, first decompress the .tar.gz or .tgz file. Some .tgz files can be directly built with a Slackbuild tool; others are source code. If it’s only source code, once it’s been decompressed (tar xvf file), here’s how to build the application:
- cd uncompressed package
- ./configure ( may require arguments; often this is enough)
- make (might be make all, make linux, check the doc; usually there is either a README file or some other build document).
- make install (should be after su root)
- verify results; small apps build pretty quickly; browsers can take hours to build. Something like a notepad editor take a minute to five minutes depending on their size.
Check it out sometime; it’s one of my favorite reasons for using Slackware. Often these self-contained images can be copied to other systems and they work great.
Arch-based systems have AUR packages, but if they don’t work, sometimes a manual approach like this work for Arch too!